Dead Reckoning
"Dead Reckoning" is the 13th episode of season 2, and the 36th produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on January 31, 2013 Synopsis 2011 In 2011, Stanton was recovering from her injuries during the Ordos mission. She is contacted by a man who had been following her CIA activities. She figures he is not part of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), but cannot identify him any further. Using the tale of the mythical Titans as an analogy, he offers her a chance to get revenge, not only against Snow, but against the man who initially sold the Laptop necessitating the Ordos mission. 2012 Lying inside a crashed car, Carter awakens to the sound of a cell phone ringing. She answers Finch, who had been trying to contact her shortly after the crash. He instructs her to flee the scene—going against police procedure—to avoid possible consequences. The next morning, Reese awakens on a city bus across from his abductor, Kara Stanton. He finds he is rigged with a bomb vest similar to Mark Snow, who is sitting beside him, and is coerced into doing tasks for Stanton. Police arrive on the scene of the car crash, discovering Special Agent Donnelly's body. Fusco is present on scene and calls Carter over—from a dropped earring, he deduced that Carter had fled the scene prior to his arrival. They meet with Finch, who presents them with Stanton's bio, and discover that she had sent Snow to steal an NSA-certified hard drive from Fujima Electronics. Reese and Snow arrive at a warehouse to fetch an item for Stanton. The seller presents them with the aforementioned hard drive, but demands a higher price. Stanton remotely instructs them to kill the seller, but Reese refuses. Before the seller can press the matter further, he and his partner are sniped. Stanton had been observing them, and reminds the pair to follow her instructions. While at a diner, Stanton taunts Reese about his new role, noting that he is refusing to eat as a form of rebellion. She notes that Snow—eating a hamburger—had also refused meals at first, but has since resigned to his fate. Reese says that his opposition will be more overt. They immediately set on their next task, following a pair of ATF agents to obtain their uniforms. They respond to one of the agent's phone call, instructing them to respond to a bomb threat (called in by Stanton) at a nearby building. Before disposing of the phone, Reese uses it to text Finch. Carter hears of the bomb threat, and Finch investigates the target building. Although listing only twenty floors, Finch discovers that the 21st floor is registered to a shell corporation operated by the Department of Defense. Hacking the DoD from Times Square, he also discovers that the location houses a cyber-security installation and cyber-warfare development lab. Reese and Snow enter the building but are stopped by a policeman. Reese demands passage, alluding to the Semtex explosives strapped to their torsos. With guidance from Stanton, they use a special elevator to access the 21st floor, defeating two Delta Force guards posted at the entry. Struggling to detain one of the guards, Snow threatens him at gunpoint, but Reese talks him out of killing. Carter and Fusco arrive at the building. They offer to help clear the stairwells in order to actually reach the 21st floor by stairs. They reach the facility's Applied Research lab which contains cyber-weapons, not bioweapons as Snow suspects. Stanton drives the men on by activating a 15 minute detonation timer. Inside, they coerce a departing lab technician named Kevin into granting them entry into the SCIF containing the weapons cache (a bank of servers isolated from the Internet). Reese attempts to talk Snow out of the plan, noting that they are out of Stanton's listening range. Snow refuses, confiding that he hasn't been able to escape from Stanton's bomb vest. Snow proceeds with the plan to install the hard drive by using a workstation to locate an unused drive bay. Reese takes Kevin aside and gains his cooperation. He also takes the opportunity to contact Finch. Together, the three of them deduce that Stanton could potentially take down the entire Internet (as well as the Machine). The tech reveals that the server is designed to securely erase itself if it is compromised. Reese jumps on the opportunity, aggravating Snow. Both are surprised by the deactivation of their vests—Stanton was trailing shortly behind them the whole while, and merely needed them to gain entry herself. Moving her captives to the facility's cyber-security monitoring center, Stanton uploads the drive's contents. Reese tries to talk her out of the plan, but she refuses and locks them inside with re-armed vests. Kevin offers more help by revealing how to unlock the door. Reese tries one last time to convince Snow to at least get clear of innocent people before the bombs blow, but Snow clubs him down. He says that the CIA has a safe house two blocks away. Snow says it's a long shot but maybe he can make it. Reese warns him that the CIA will consider him compromised and all that is waiting for him is a black hood but Snow simply wishes him luck and takes the elevator down. Carter and Fusco arrive; she attempts to disarm the vest, but Reese and Fusco convince her to flee as well. Resolving to not let others be harmed, Reese exits to the roof, intending to wait out the timer. He instead runs into Finch, who accepts the hard drive, but is not deterred by Reese threatening to shoot him. Finch talks Reese into letting him attempt to disarm the vest. Although not trained in bomb disposal, he is able to analyze the circuitry and sets to work on the locked phone. Using the phone's IMEI code, he obtains five potential unlock codes, and with three chances succeeds in using the correct one (3095) to disarm the bomb. Stanton returns to her car to receive her payment: the identity of the man who sold the Laptop. The mysterious man wishes her luck, as the man responsible does not exist in any public record. She writes down the name of the man she is hunting for, but before she can act on the intel, she is confronted by Snow, who ends up hiding in the backseat of her car. She turns to hear the beeping only to hear Snow say " ''You were right, about me being dead ; I'm gonna be great at it" ''and with that ; both are killed as the bomb's explosion rips the car apart. Happily reuniting with Bear, Reese asks if Finch has figured out what the malware uploaded by Stanton was designed to do. Finch remarks on the difficulty of the decryption process, only being able to obtain the payload's activation date as being five months from now. Back at the police station, Special Agent Moss reveals to Carter that they have identified the "suicide bombers", and have also identified Snow as the "Man in a Suit" and closed that case. Fusco asked if Carter was okay—both remain skeptical. In the end flashback of the blast in which Stanton and Snow died is shown and it is revealed that the name Stanton was told by the mysterious man was Harold Finch. Episode Notes *Dead Reckoning is a technique of orienting a map without using a compass, by looking at the surrounding environment; predictive calculation based on inference; guesswork. * This episode mentioned malware software known as Stuxnet and Flame, respectively. Malware is a potentially unwanted programs (PUP), whose purpose is to either control computing equipment for nefarious ends, or to destroy (or steal data). Stuxnet and Flame, two of the best known PUPs share some similarities: :: a) the infection of computer systems seems to be highly concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa, especially Iran. :: b) the nature of the source code is so sophisticated and well-coordinated that it likely was created and conducted with "nation-state support". :: c) the programs share some similarities to one another with respect to some of the modules of their respective source code itself, which suggests common point of origin. Production Notes *Actor John Nolan who portrays Greer is the uncle of showrunner Jonathan Nolan. Bloopers and Continuity Errors *When in the SCIF, Reese points out that there is no cellphone reception (thus Stanton cannot listen in on them) while close-ups of his phone show two bars of mobile network reception and full wi-fi. *The phone model on Reese's bomb vest changes: on the bus it's what looks like an Android phone, later inside the SCIF and what Finch unlocks on the rooftop is an iPhone. Trivia *The three books that compose Stanton's Social Security Number appear to be fictitious. It is likely that the titles were created with the overall theme of the episode in mind. The book titles are: **"Debugging the Mind: A Guide to Information Ethics" by Pamela Hall **"Historical Views of the Future" **"Purple Mountain Rhapsodies - A History of American Music" by Corazon *One of the authors, Pamela Hall, is a published author of children's books. *Chinese TV usually doesn't have English captions. Instead, most shows are aired with Chinese captions for viewers who don't understand Mandarin Chinese very well. *According to her death certificate, Stanton died on December 23, 2010 5:10AM. *Both Greer and Stanton were assigned a white square by the Machine indicating that they are not aware of its existence. Stanton's square changes to red when she informs Greer about the completion of her assignment meaning that the Machine categorizes her as a threat to itself or to Finch. *A few points of interest concerning the abbreviations/acronyms used in Kara Stanton's Department of Defense (DoD) Service Record **CAPT=Captain **DOR= Date of Rank **PMOS= Primary Military Occupational Specialty **BILMOS= Billet Military Occupational Specialty **XO= Executive Officer **CI= Counter Intelligence **HUMINT= Human-gathered Intelligence *Please Note, the format of the date as used in the Armed Services is slightly different from that of the civilian world. In the Civilian World, it would be month, followed by day and year, as oppose to the military where it is year (in full form, not just the last two digits), followed by the month and day. *Foreshadowing: Be a warning or indication of (a future event). Just before John wakes up in a New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) bus, an image is shown of the facility which John will have to infiltrate in order to commit some act of sabotage with Agent Snow. Promo Videos Person of Interest - UXO|UXO Person of Interest - Dead Man|Dead Man Person of Interest - The Bigger Picture|The Bigger Picture Person of Interest - Old Times' Sake|Old Times' Sake Person of Interest - Stop Wasting Time|Stop Wasting Time References es:Dead Reckoning 212 212